In the context of conventional woven belts comprising woven fabric or conventional knit belts comprising knit fabric, where these are formed such that the entirety is of mesh construction, there has been occurrence of fraying of yarn at belt side ends or at locations where the belt is rubbed. And when an endless belt is formed from woven fabric or knit fabric, this has typically been done by causing the two ends in the long direction of the belt to be joined together so as to form the endless belt. However, when such an endless belt comprising woven fabric or knit fabric has been driven, it is sometimes the case that the endless belt undergoes lateral displacement and meanders. The belt might therefore be provided with a guide member so as to prevent such meandering. However, steps comprising projections and recesses which are parallel to the direction of travel and which might serve as guides with respect to the direction of travel have typically not been provided at the belt itself. Such belts have therefore been subjected to secondary processing where guides in the direction of travel were to be provided. However, there has been the problem that employment of secondary processing for provision of such guides has resulted in increased manufacturing cost.
Furthermore, the strength of a mesh belt, i.e., a belt which is such that the entire surface of the belt which comprises woven fabric or knit fabric is made of mesh, cannot ordinarily be described as adequate. To increase mesh belt strength, mesh belts have therefore been formed in such fashion that the material from which the mesh belt is formed by weaving or knitting has been yarn which is extremely thick. There are also rubber-coated belts; i.e., belts which are such that the surface of the material which comprises woven fabric or knit fabric is coated with rubber. However, where such rubber-coated belts have been employed, it has been necessary to carry out processing so that the belt could be provided with holes at rubber-coated portions so as not to defeat the purpose of the underlying mesh, which has increased cost. Thus, rubber-coated laminated belts comprising rubber elastic bodies and woven fabric or knit fabric (hereinafter these are referred to collectively as “woven/knit fabric”) are expensive.
Because knit fabric is typically of high flexibility, belts made up of only knit fabric are almost never found. Furthermore, because belts comprising knit fabric have high flexibility, preventing attainment of sufficient belt tension, and because the coefficient of friction of the belt is moreover low, causing the gripping force produced by the force of friction to be inadequate, it is necessary to apply a rubber coating or the like to the surface of the belt as described above so that an adequate gripping force due to the force of friction can be obtained. Moreover, with conventional belts comprising woven/knit fabric, there have been problems such as the fact that there is fraying of yarn at belt side ends, or there is breakage of yarn where the belt is rubbed, and that this causes a run in the material from that point, as a result of which the belt is immediately made unfit in use.
Belts in which the mesh belt side ends have been subjected to certain processing have been proposed as solution to the problem of fraying of yarn at side ends in such mesh belts comprising woven/knit fabric. To wit, a belt has been proposed in which reinforcing synthetic fiber fabric is made to fuse with and cover the ends on either side of a mesh belt woven from yarn comprising synthetic fibers (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 1).
Moreover, a belt employing knit fabric has been disclosed that is a belt in which a rubber elastic body is laminated to one side of flexible knit cloth (e.g., see Patent Reference No. 2).
Furthermore, a conveyor belt has been proposed which has a belt core that is woven in mesh-like fashion from glass fibers, the belt being such that a plurality of seal strips formed from resin or flexible material are integrally provided in row-like fashion in the conveying direction, being formed so as to protrude from the inner and outer surfaces thereof, with the belt side ends being moreover reinforced with fabric or other such reinforcing material in such fashion as to straddle the belt core (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 3).
Moreover, a filter mesh belt has been proposed which is formed from a mesh portion formed between portions at the sides formed in the long direction and a plurality of reinforcing portions arranged so as to cross this mesh portion, these side portions and these reinforcing portions being woven more tightly than the mesh portion and being imparted with more rigidity than the mesh portion, and which is moreover such that hot-melt fibers are woven into the side portions and reinforcing portions, application of heat treatment thereto causing these to be molded together in integral fashion to form an integrally molded belt (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 4).
Furthermore, a mesh belt has been proposed in which the warp yarns are parallel to the conveying direction and are of thickness 1 mm to 2 mm, and in which the weft yarns perpendicular to these warp yarns are 0.1 mm to 0.5 mm in diameter, the warp yarns being made thicker than the weft yarns so as to achieve improved strength and endurance, and in which the mesh belt which has been made to have a mesh opening ratio of 15% to 40% is moreover coated or impregnated with silicone rubber to form the belt (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 5).
Moreover, a belt has been proposed which comprises a solid belt, holes for air permeability having been formed in this solid belt, irregular groove shapes parallel to the belt conveying direction being present, height of the irregular groove shapes being not less than 0.1 mm, the irregular shapes repeating with a periodicity that is not less than 1 mm, height of unevenness in paper which is the object to be conveyed being reduced by suction means (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 6).
Moreover, a transport belt has been proposed which is such that an air-permeable transport belt comprising a mesh belt is formed from yarns comprising fiber strands of twisted yarn in a vertical direction extending in the transport direction, and cross yarns intersecting these yarns comprising fiber strands in the vertical direction and extending in such fashion as to cross the transport direction, the gap between the yarns comprising fiber strands in the vertical direction being larger than the gap between weft yarns, i.e., between the cross yarns in the horizontal direction (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 7).
Furthermore, as fabric for clothing, a fabric has been proposed in which rib stitching is carried out using a ground yarn comprising acrylic yarn, yarn which is a mixture of cotton and polyester, cotton yarn, and polyester yarn, and polyolefin yarn which exhibits plastic deformation and which is comparatively thin is made to serve as plating yarn with respect to this ground yarn, plating being carried out by knitting this into the entire surface of the acrylic ground yarn in such fashion that the polyolefin plating yarn does not emerge from the face side, to form fabric having good shape retention (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 8).
Moreover, a conveyor belt has been proposed in which the surface of a belt having a knitted stitch structure is imparted with the slip-preventing capability of rubber elasticity (e.g., see Patent Reference No. 9).
Furthermore and in addition, a belt is proposed which is a conveyor belt comprising mesh formed from cloth made in plain weave, wherein the mesh pitch is set so as to be 100 to 170 μm, more solid yarn than twisted yarn is employed, and the difference in height between warp yarns and weft yarns where fibers intersect is set so as to be 20 to 100 μm (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 10).
Moreover, in the context of a method for manufacturing stockinette hosiery, a technique has been proposed in which heat sufficient to cause fusing of hot-melt yarn but insufficient to cause melting of heat-shrink yarn is applied to knitted cloth comprising such yarns so as to cause the knitted cloth to shrink and so as to also cause adhesion at the hot-melt yarn to prevent fraying of stitches (see, for example, Patent Reference No. 11).